Getting soft water - can distilled water work?

[mtchye]

Hi everyone,

Now that the female cacutoides is busy leading around her group of fry - they are eating microworms and frozen bbs already - I'm keen to try some other apistos.

I know that certain species like Dicrossus prefer very soft water for spawning. I have a dicrossus female but have not seen males in stores for a while - even with no dominant male in the tank! All look female with red fins.. anyway now i know about the sex changing possiblity i may buy a group of 'females' ...

What i wanted to know is that a friend of mine has a water distiller for drinking. Can you use that to get ultra soft water? Is it harmful - and is R/O water different or better?

Thanks for any help,

Vincent Chye
Vice-President, Perth Cichlid Society
http://pub79.ezboard.com/bperthcichlidsociety

 

[aspen]

mixing r/o or distilled with your tapwater makes very little difference, except that distilled water uses quite a bit of energy to make the pure water compared with r/o. but for small amounts, you certainly won't notice that much difference. since you have the access, why not?

as for buying females and hoping one will change sex, well, i wouldn't bet the farm on it. i believe it is a relatively rare occurrance. maybe others could comment on that.

rick

 

[mtchye]

Soft water

Hi Aspen,

Thanks for the info. I suspected as much.. it does seem to be a very inefficient way to produce soft water - it takes ages to get a few litres! But since he practically leaves it on all the time, I might just take advantage of that and use it for small water changes to slowly get the TDS down.

I agree that its probably a longshot getting a male from a whole bunch of females that incidentally have not developed a male in the LFS tank. I'll just have to keep looking.

There aren't that many dwarves available here, and some are very expensive/poor quality due to inbreeding. I am thinking of panduro as the LFS has just brought in an imported shipment.. Also on the wholesalers list there is 'miua' - which i have never seen available, and they are exorbitantly priced! Must do some research on these

thanks again

 

[PikeLee]

mtchye

I don't have a RO unit at home and my water from the tap is really hard with a high PH. The way I bring it down is by using either RO drinking water or Distilled drinking water that I purchase at the local Grocery store (.58 cents).

To get the water parameters where I want, I usually mix 1 gallon of tap to 4 gallons of RO to get the measurements I need. The fish seem to be doing fine.

HTH

 

[Randall]

Dicrossus spp.

Dear Vincent,

There are three independent published studies with which I am aware that pretty much establish that Dicrossus spp. are hermaphrodites. Two were recently discussed by Dr. Wayne Liebel in "Tropical Fish Hobbyist" magazine and in the "Buntbarsche Bulletin," and the third was conducted by our very own Ted Judy.

In all three studies, domimant "female" Dicrossus spp., in the absence of a male, developed male characteristics, spawned and sired viable fry. When removing the "female now male" from the tank, the next dominant "female" underwent the same change. Pretty cool, huh?

It might be interesting if you got yourself a group of "female" Dicrossus spp. and see what happens.

Good luck!

Randall Kohn